Bored and Intoxicated
by JustSaraNoH
Summary: Agent Phil Coulson finds something in Clint Barton's file that shows him why it's a bad idea to let Hawkeye be bored and intoxicated on a mission.


**NOTES:** This is an example of a set of drabble prompts spinning out of control and forming their own story. I'll give you the actual prompts at the end so as not to spoil anything.

Thanks to my lovely and talented beta, **KrisEleven**.

Hope you all enjoy this little bit of craziness.

* * *

Clint leaned back in the chair and placed his feet atop the polished conference room table. He had ten minutes of peace before his next briefing. Thankfully, it was in the same room as his last meeting, so for once he was going to be the first one to a debrief, and you better believe he wasn't going to let Coulson forget it.

Barton had his eyes closed as he waited, catching a few moments of peace and quiet. He heard the door to the conference room open and rapid click of shoes across the tile floor. Dress shoes. Clint easily recognized the rate at which they were moving to mean that he was in trouble—he'd heard that particular pace a number of times before. He forced himself to remain still and keep his eyes closed, even when the sound of a strong hand slamming a piece of paper onto the table filled the room.

"You want to explain this, Specialist?"

Quiet tone, large gestures; yep, he was in big trouble. Cracking open his right eye, he looked at the paper and avoided the handler's eyes. It took a moment for his brain to translate the Cyrillic, and when it did he felt his stomach turn inside out. He quickly sat up in his chair, boots slamming to the ground. "Where did you find that?" he asked quietly and slowly.

"Buried deep in one of the multiple folders that is your personnel file," Coulson answered in clipped tones.

"Tasha!" Clint bellowed.

A moment later, the petite redhead sauntered into the room, brows drawn together in concern. "You rang?"

Barton thrust an angry finger at the slip of paper on the table. "You said you were going to take care of that."

Natasha looked down at the piece of paper a single eyebrow raised when she recognized its significance. "I did."

"Well, apparently not. Or at least you didn't hide it well enough."

She crossed her arms. "Are you saying I don't know how to cover my tracks?"

"I'm not," Barton replied before pointing his finger at Coulson, "but he is."

She turned to the handler. "You found this?"

Coulson gave a sharp nod as other footsteps filtered into the room. "Found what?" Bruce asked around a mouthful of donut. Behind him Tony, Steve and Thor wore matching expressions of curiosity.

Natasha turned to Clint. "You want to tell them or should I?"

"One of you is definitely going to be explaining this," Coulson answered.

"Explaining what? Is something wrong?" Steve asked before taking a sip of his coffee and having a seat at the table.

Tony noticed the slip of paper and picked it up. Glancing it over, he broke out a wide grin. "If this is what I think it is, Pepper owes me a grand."

Clint leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. "I'm glad you all find my life so amusing and bet-worthy."

"I'll only find it amusing if it wins me the bet," Tony answered before managing to flop into another chair without spilling a drop of coffee with practiced ease. "So it's what I think it is?"

Clint felt eyes on him, so he raised his own to meet Natasha's. "I think it's only fair that you have to tell them about this since you failed to keep it hidden."

"If you make me responsible for telling, you do realize the kind of things I will say about you. And most of them won't even be lies."

Clint repressed a shudder at that thought. Having a super spy as a best friend did not always work to one's advantage. He sighed before sitting back up in his chair. "Alright, kids, gather 'round—it's story time with Uncle Clint. This week's edition is the tale of that one time Natasha and I got married." He made a mental note to ask Jarvis later for an image of each of the faces in the room. Tony's grin some how managed to widen even further, Steve's jaw had dropped a couple of inches, Thor seemed please to hear anyone's grand tales, Bruce had a look of relief that an embarrassing story was going to be told that didn't involve him, Natasha's eyes were glazed over in memories, and Coulson… Clint was pretty sure he didn't want to know what was going through Coulson's mind right now. Probably the numerous ways he could inflict bodily harm on Barton's body using only the pen and file folder that were within reach.

* * *

Six years earlier, Clint and Natasha were assigned a mission to Volgograd. A former KGB operative who had declared himself to be retired apparently wasn't living up to his status. He was peddling information to whomever would keep his bank account funded. SHIELD ordered the two operatives to see what information he had collected regarding their organization in an effort to see if the man, Rudnikov, deserved being left alone, monitored, or permanently dispatched.

The two of them spent two weeks holed up in a safehouse taking turns listening to bugs they'd planted in his home. Thankfully for them, the guy was paranoid and agoraphobic. Sneaking into his home while the mark slept hadn't been fun, but at least they didn't have to tail him through wintry streets in the dead of night to listen in on his meetings. He was a quiet man who lived by himself. An elderly neighbor, Elena, brought him groceries on Mondays and Thursdays. The only time the man spoke was when someone was in his house. He refused to do business over the telephone for fear of people listening in. Thankfully, he never checked his favorite pen, which contained a listening device as well as a motion sensor to record the movements of his handwriting and essentially transcribing all the letters he wrote to old comrades and new business partners.

This left a lot of downtime, something Natasha and Clint could only stomach in small doses. So they made games: who could do a handstand the longest (Clint), who could jump further (Natasha), who could hold their breath the longest (originally Clint until Natasha clamped her fingers over his nose to keep him from cheating). And poker, lots of poker; also, lots of vodka. Natasha always drank him under the table, so Clint tried to avoid starting that kind of contests in that particular area, but they were both pretty even when it came to poker, thanks due to their training in reading body language while maintaining their own straight face.

And that was what led them to their trouble that particular evening. Being bored and intoxicated, it was only a matter of time before the bets moved past wagering their meager salaries. Strip poker didn't sound as appealing as one might think since they'd both spent plenty time with the other naked. So the wagers started with small things—chores. Twenty minutes in, Natasha was in charge of doing laundry while Clint would have to supplement their rations with three homecooked meals over the next week. He was depressed at having to deal with buying ingredients in an unfamiliar market until he was able to bluff Natasha into coffee duty for the remainder of the mission.

The night wore on and the bets escalated. Clint declared it the final hand of the evening. Natasha paused in thought before declaring her conditions: "If I win, you have to show up to work for a month in drag."

Clint smiled and slurred, "You really think that's going to phase me? Or anyone at headquarters?"

"And you wonder why we burn through handlers so quickly."

He rolled his eyes and paused before grinning. "If I win, you have to marry me."

Natasha groaned. "I think I would rather bite off my own legs than do that."

"I know-that's what makes it such a great bet."

Clint, at the time, was ecstatic to see so many twos in his hand. The four of them took down Natasha's three queens. He laughed till he almost fell out of his chair while she repeatedly banged her forehead onto the table.

After they confirmed that Rudnikov was down for the night—the man was ridiculous with sticking to a strict schedule—Clint grabbed their coats and drug Natasha at the door.

"We're doing this now?" she whined.

"Yep. Tomorrow morning we'll be sober and smart enough to know better, and I'm not wasting a fantastic hand on nothing."

The supplies were easy enough to obtain. There was a small wedding chapel that provided documentation, rings, and a walk-in ceremony schedule a couple of klicks from the safehouse. It was so easy in fact that Clint wondered if they'd been staying in the Russian equivalent of Las Vegas this whole time. If that was the case, he would've spent the last couple of weeks doing things more entertaining than seeing which of the two of them could do the most back flips in a row (Natasha).

Natasha had brought a bottle of vodka with her. It helped keep them warm and kept her mouth occupied so she wouldn't back out of their agreement. The ceremony was in Russian, but Natasha swore it was legit. And from the pained look on her face, he knew she wasn't lying. She rolled her eyes and took swigs from the bottle while quickly repeating whatever the officiator asked of her. Clint grinned like an idiot at how much she hated him at that moment, and used the alcohol as a means of blocking out thoughts of whatever physical harm she was going to use to exact her revenge. He did his best to repeat whatever was asked for him, but it was mostly slurred mumbles, curses he'd learned from her, or vowing to be "strong like bull" in a horrendous Russian accent. Natasha hated when he did things like that.

The only time she broke a smile was when they reached the unity candle portion of the ceremony. Clint commented on the stupidity of having an open flame be part of something that was committed by mostly drunk people judging by the people waiting in the lobby of the small chapel. "Because they might get the idea to do something like this." He grabbed a hold of Natasha's vodka, took a swig and then brought forth his firebreathing talents that had remained latent since his circus days. Natasha smiled and gave a few claps of applause before reclaiming her bottle.

The officiator managed to regain his senses long enough to remember what he was required to say. Natasha nodded at one of his requests and thrusted the larger of the two cheap rings onto Clint's hand. He moved to return the favor but she pulled her hands back. "You're drunk. You'll probably shove too hard break my finger. I'll do it." The man continued his speech for another minute and then stopped speaking. Natasha gave Clint an expectant look.

"What? Did I miss something?" he asked.

"Yeah, me upholding your bet. Kiss me, moron."

He awoke tangled in sheets and limbs, hungover in his bed six hours later. It was Natasha's pained moan that brought him back to consciousness. "Ugh, can someone please turn the sun off? What did we do last night?"

"Not sure." He ran his left hand over his face in attempt to soothe the pain in his head a bit. It was then he felt the foreign metal object on his finger. "Umm, Nat?" She gave a grunt as a response. "Are you wearing a ring, too?"

"What? You know I don't wear jewelry."

He grabbed her left hand to inspect it. Sure enough, she had one too. He twisted it around her finger to make her aware of its presence. The action spawned an impressive lungful of cursing from her. "What did you do?"

"Why is it my fault?"

"It's always your fault."

"Okay, yeah, probably. What are we going to do about it?"

"Well," she paused a moment to assess the situation before answering, "I do want kids, but I don't think we should start a family for at least a year so we can have time to really get to know each other."

Her answer caused his eyes to fly open. "Please tell me you're joking right now."

A forceful elbow knocked him out of the bed. "Of course I'm joking. Why would I want your spawn growing inside of me? You're going to go make sure everything is still recording and see if there's any news on Rudnikov while I go erase this from history, even if it means I personally have to torch this whole city. Better than anyone finding out I married you."

"I love you too, sweetums."

"Ugh, go away."

"Seriously, Nat, please don't let anyone know about this. I'll gladly have your babies if you're successful."

* * *

"Tasha spent the day manipulating the local municipality to have the marriage certificate struck from the record. And I thought she'd erased all the evidence of everything."

"That makes two of us," Natasha replied.

"You made a valiant effort, but you were unsuccessful," Coulson pointed out. "Not only were you unable to hide this from me—never try hiding things from me—you two are still technically married."

Clint's shocked outburst was drowned out by Tony's guffaws. "God, I love coming to meetings and not be the one getting in trouble for stupid mistakes."

"Are you sure?" Natasha asked.

"Positive. You submitted incorrect paperwork. Since discovering the information this morning, I've already been in contact with the local government. You should be divorced by the end of the week if you so desire."

"Yes," Clint and Natasha said simultaneously.

"Sweetheart, I have to be honest with you." Clint said, turning a serious expression to his wife. "One—I've committed adultery. A lot. Two—I'm never having your babies."

"Can Midgardian men be responsible for bearing offspring? I do not remember this being part of my cultural lessons," Thor wondered aloud.

Steve shook his head, "He's joking. I think. Science could've advanced while I was frozen."

"Not that much," Bruce said, leaning his way into the side conversation. "Other than a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, no one's really tried it."

"This is still your fault," Natasha muttered bitterly.

"No, Nat, no, it's not. You said you were going to take care of it, and it wouldn't need taking care if you hadn't been stubborn enough to follow through on my idiotic, vodka-induced bet anyway. Today was supposed to be a good day. I was the first one to show up for the meeting—"

"You were in here napping after a previous meeting that you were late for," Coulson quietly corrected.

"Still counts. I was going to be the first one in here. Someone else was going to get yelled at, and I wasn't going to be _still married_!"

Natasha turned to their handler, "If he dies before the week is over, does that mean I get to be the one who collects on his life insurance policy?"

Coulson took the copy of the marriage license and placed it back in his file folder, ignoring the question. "We have no news to report this morning. You all are free to spend the day as you please, but be ready to come back in if something changes."

"Wait," Clint said, "This whole meeting was some sort of punishment for Nat and I? Nothing else?"

"Best meeting ever," Tony muttered with a grin that quickly faltered when Natasha glared in his direction.

"Yes," Coulson answered. "Everyone but Barton is dismissed." The two men waited for the rest to clear out. The exiting men made sure to put a wide berth between themselves and Natasha on the way out of the conference room. "Just so you know, I'm making a note in your record that when left intoxicated and bored on missions, you're prone to marriage."

"Really, sir, all someone has to do is ask."

The left corner of Coulson's mouth twitched upward ever so slightly as he continued writing. "Noted. Dismissed, Specialist."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

**MORE NOTES:** The five words that prompted this story were: loaf, poker, chapel, candle and brass.


End file.
